The US elections remain up in the air with the future of Donald Trump and Joe Biden in key battlefield states that were too close to be called and that may take until at least noon Wednesday to resolve.
Without a “blue wave” for Democrats Tuesday night, Trump and Biden are preparing for a longer process as the ballots continue to be counted. In the early hours of Wednesday in the US, Biden won Arizona, flipping the first state to the Democrats compared to 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
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Here’s the state of play and when we could get clear results from the states set to determine this year’s winner:
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania was expected to come under scrutiny in a close race, with both campaigns aggressively courting voters in the final days before the election.
At 1:30 a.m. local time, the Pennsylvania State Department reported that nearly 1.4 million mail-in ballots were counted, just over half of the total, statewide, with 67% for Biden and 32% for Trump. 3.1 million votes were counted on Election Day, with 67% for Trump and 32% for Biden.
Pennsylvania has more than 1 million votes to be counted, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said in a Twitter post early Wednesday morning.
In Philadelphia, the most populous county in the Commonwealth, where 76% of registered voters are Democrats, only 75,755 of the expected 350,000 to 400,000 mail-in ballots had been counted by 9 p.m., and Biden won 94% of them. .
Bottom Line: Philadelphia is expected to resume reporting on mail ballots at approximately 9 am Wednesday. State officials say the final result should be ready “in a few days.”
Wisconsin
Wisconsin, with 10 electoral votes, is likely to report more comprehensive results in the early hours of the morning, after poll workers struggled with an unprecedented number of ballots mailed since the polls opened Tuesday for the morning. Biden’s campaign has counted on changing the state after Trump’s narrow victory in 2016.
The state’s voting system is highly decentralized, with 1,850 municipal secretaries administering the elections. Smaller municipalities can finish first, said Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the state electoral commission, during a call with reporters Tuesday night. But the biggest shock will come from a recount of Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, where roughly 169,000 votes were cast.
Bottom Line: Milwaukee is likely to complete its absentee vote count soon, but some other cities have votes to report as well.
Michigan
Michigan, another state that Trump narrowly won in 2016, likely won’t have final results until Wednesday night, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told reporters. The city of Detroit had a 55% turnout, equivalent to more than 250,000 votes.
The state likely won’t have final results until later Wednesday because Detroit is the largest venue and had a record turnout this year.
Benson said other Michigan counties will report in the next few hours, which could give election watchers an idea of where the state is leaning. He said 3.3 million absentee ballots have been received and are being tabulated and another 2 million to 2.5 million voted at the polls today.
Bottom Line: “I’m sure we’ll have more updates for Detroit in the morning,” Benson said, adding that he expects the full tabulation of every vote in Detroit to be complete by Wednesday night.
Georgia
Some of Georgia’s largest counties were struggling with absentee ballot counts, tying the results in the reliably Republican state where Biden appeared to be doing a strong showing.
In Fulton County, which includes most of the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, 71% of precincts had reported by 12:30 a.m. Fulton suffered a setback early Tuesday in counting mail-in ballots, after a A water leak forced officials to stop counting and tens of thousands of ballots were left uncounted.
Votes are still being counted in neighboring DeKalb County.
In Gwinnett County, which has Georgia’s second-largest population, election officials also struggled with a technical problem that was stalling the processing of up to 80,000 mail-in ballots. As of 12:30 am, 97% of the in-person constituencies in Gwinnett were reporting.
Bottom line: Wednesday morning should bring more clarity on Peach State’s results.
North Carolina
The North Carolina race was close at dawn Wednesday, with Trump leading by about 77,000 votes as of 1:00 a.m.
About 62% of the state’s voters cast their ballots before Election Day. More registered Democrats voted early than Republicans, but a third of the electorate is not affiliated with either major party. Counting the same-day ballots, which is expected to skew Republicans, will take longer and the state has up to nine days to count ballots mailed before Election Day.
In a sign of the delays, only a third of the districts in Democratic-leaning Wake County were counted, while in Granville County, where Hillary Clinton narrowly won a victory in 2016, no results were reported. Republican-leaning areas, like Union County near Charlotte, also had many votes to count.
Democrats took some comfort from the reelection of Gov. Roy Cooper, but it’s unclear if that’s a sign that Biden can change the traditionally Republican state.
Bottom Line: State officials have said they expect 97% of the votes to be counted before the hours of Wednesday morning.
Nevada
A final count is not expected in Nevada for several days, as it expects mail-in ballots to arrive until Election Day, although it is unclear how many people waited that long to vote. With about 80% of the votes counted, Biden had an advantage of just under three percentage points.
“Clerks have until November 10 to receive ballots by mail and until November 12 to count them,” said Jennifer Russell, spokeswoman for the Nevada secretary of state.
Bottom line: The state began publishing biased results Tuesday night, with Biden holding a slight lead over Trump. That count, which included early voting and Election Day, will continue to come in overnight.
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